Leaps & Bounds

Inspiring Change

About Leaps & Bounds

Leaps & Bounds Trust is a registered charity and company limited by guarantee. Its delivery remit, and governing principles, is to work with at-risk young people to turn their lives round through a combination of intense & sustained personal development, ongoing pastoral support and the highest standard of artistic, cultural or sporting engagement.

Leaps & Bounds delivered the acclaimed Ballet Hoo! project bringing ballet and personal development to a group of vulnerable teenagers. Building on this success we are developing new projects.

We work exclusively with disadvantaged and at risk young people aged 14 to 19 typically drawn from areas of social and economic deprivation. We use a unique combination of three ingredients to generate extraordinary changes in the lives of these young people:

Personal intervention, uncovering issues for each young person, challenge their behaviours, and help them to see and make different choices;

Involvement in cultural projects of the highest standard, working with professional artists and sportspeople;

Ongoing one-to-one pastoral support and personal development from locally based Life Coaches.

Working with each group for a period of 12 to 18 months we help each young person to generate extraordinary change in their lives. Typically these changes include:

Enrolment in education or employment

Creating stable home lives and renewing damaged family relationships

Ending criminal behaviour

Improving health and fitness

Typically young people from our projects have benefited as follows:

91% continued to improve their physical health and self-esteem

82% developed more stable family relationships

80% returned to education or secured jobs

80% who were in care are living now independently

No-one is now homeless.

By supporting young people in education and encouraging a return to education or work for those that are not, the Leaps & Bounds programme offers an alternative route to educational achievement resulting in qualifications such as a BTEC in Performing Arts, Youth Arts Award, Modern Apprenticeship Award and Millennium Volunteers Award.

We are delighted to announce that the Leaps & Bounds WROSNE project reached the semi-finals of The National Lottery Awards. The Awards are an annual search to find the UK’s favourite Lottery-funded projects, and they aim to celebrate and recognise the difference that those projects have made to people, places and communities all across the UK. WROSNE certainly did! The WROSNE project competed against nine other projects for the title of Best Arts Project. Unfortunately we did not recieve enough votes to become the favourite project however thank you to everyone who did take the time to vote. We are currently working on developing new projects - so watch this space!